Pentium vs. Celeron?

Daltonator · Post by **Daltonator** » 2005-03-18 02:04pm

Haven't found a topic for this, and since I'm not well versed on CPUs I thought I'd get an opinion or two from you guys. Basically, one of my brother's coworkers was wondering which one to get. In my brother's words...

"Well, he just wants to know if he should get a Celeron or Pentium Processor, Benefits vs. Risks, etc..."

I was thinking a Celeron if he wanted a budget CPU that was fairly fast, but he does a lot with his machine...

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-03-18 02:10pm

go with pentiums. if he plans on doing alot with it, then a celeron is not the way to go, as they have a smaller front side bus and are generally much poorer at handling any graphic intensive applications.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2005-03-18 03:34pm

Unless you only plan to wordprocess and send the occasional email, then you should consider Celeron a dirty word.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-03-18 06:19pm

The recent Celeron D's have improved the performance gap between low-end and high-end procs. If he just needs it for office task, get the Celeron... the current generation Pentiums are a total waste of money, in my opinion.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-03-18 06:21pm

Yeah, Celeron's have terrible performance.

I remember benchmarks a year or so back, where tomshardware actually had a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4 outperform a 2.4 GHz Celeron!

And Celeron's have less cache, which sucks even worse for gaming.

So unless he's doing NOTHING but word processing and web browsing, stay away from Celeron.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2005-03-18 06:29pm

I think some clarification is in order.
1. What, exactly, does 'a lot' mean?
A lot as in high-CPU usage, or a lot as in a lot of different things? If the latter, what things?
Because if we're talking about a lot as in E-mail/surfing/spreadsheets/word processing/databases/HTML design/burining CDs/DVDs/the occasional game of Solitaire etc I can't think of a single CPU on the market that can't handle that.
2. Why does it have to be Intel? Are we talking about upgrading an older rig, or is this a new machine?

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-03-18 06:58pm

If he wants a budget CPU, go Athlon XP. More expensive than Celeron, but considerably cheaper than P4.

I highly recommend ibuypower.com for customizing a computer, and compgeeks.com for buying parts.

Seggybop · Post by **Seggybop** » 2005-03-18 06:59pm

Celeron is horrifyingly crippled, and P4 is far overpriced. AMD for the win.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2005-03-18 08:11pm

For basic tasks a Celeron is fine. AMD is a better value but it is harder to get an OEM/VAR box with an AMD processor in it versus an Intel one.

Post by **Dalton** » 2005-03-19 09:52pm

Thanks for the tips, guys. I'll let him know.